Mr. Forgettable #Wattys2016

19

The day was awful. There was no other way to describe it. On the other hand, Larkin could think of about ten other adjectives to describe her worse-than-awful day. Dreadful, terrible, appalling, unpleasant, poor, horrible, horrific, shocking, dire, bad. In fact, Larkin used the thesaurus on her phone to look up even more synonyms for awful. The activity kept her from thinking about the events of the day. Wednesdays are second worst, after Mondays, she decided.

She rode the bus home and bitterly missed the days when she would walk with Greta in the open air. The bus was stuffy and it was impossible to escape the cloying scent of body odor mixed with generously applied perfume.

Larkin had thought her day would be okay as long as she didn't fall asleep in class. That's the worst that could happen, she thought. That was before Larkin went to Chemistry.

It wasn't the class itself. She loved chemistry. Her love for the subject was amplified only by the fact that everyone else hated it. Naturally, she embraced that fact and quickly became the teacher's favorite. Alas, the issue was Jacob and the partner project they had been assigned to do on the third day of school.

Larkin refused to talk to Jacob. He had tried to approach her before class began, but she gave him the cold shoulder. If he was the one to shoot at her, Larkin didn't want anything to do with him. She thought she had someone to trust, but obviously not. Friends don't shoot at friends. Unless we're playing laser tag.

"Larkin," he had said, poking her on her shoulder. "We really should plan on when we are going to do this project. As much as I don't like this class, I also don't like waiting 'til the last minute to do things."

Larkin had narrowed her eyes infinitesimally. She didn't know how he could act so normal. Wasn't one supposed to be traumatized after shooting at another? Disregarding that she had never shot at anyone with a real, actual gun before, Larkin did think so. Jacob was a human, not a robot. She pursed her lips before deciding to break her icy silence.

"It's due next Friday. We have plenty of time," she mumbled. Larkin really liked the idea of doing the project by herself and simply turning it in without his name on it.

After that, Larkin angled her shoulders to face the window, completely blocking Jacob. Sweet peace.

Once chemistry was over, she faced German class with Finn and lunch with everyone. Greta was again missing, and Larkin couldn't help but wonder what had Greta missing school so often. She had missed Monday morning, too, and had shown up right before Larkin threw up and went home. Maybe she's in the mafia, thought Larkin. However, Larkin dismissed that idea quickly. Markusville didn't have a mafia. She would know.

During lunch, she blatantly avoided making any type of contact with Jacob. As a result, she ended up talking animatedly with Silvie about the upcoming Labor Day weekend, during which they all planned to go camping at Sterling Lake. Sadly, Jacob would probably be going with one of his friends, too.

()()()

Larkin let the house phone ring. She was busy digging through her backpack for her flash drive, and she swore she had seen it floating around on the bottom somewhere. She could hear the answering machine pick it up, and when she heard her mother's voice on the other end, she decided it would be best to answer it.

"Elizabeth, Larkin, it's me. Larkin, shouldn't you be home from school? Why aren't you picking—"

Larkin cut her mother off by picking up the phone.

"I'm here mom," groaned Larkin. "What's up?"

There was silence on the other end of the line before her mother continued.